Retrospective of the Purple Wall

The Purple WallOne Saturday morning around three weeks ago, I woke up in my daughter’s room.

The movers had come and gone, I had been through a crazy week of flights and orienting to a new job, and all that was left in our house were a handful of things that we needed to last a few days: an air mattress and similar sleeping gear for the children, luggage for a week, and the handful of small items that you don’t trust the movers to handle. We had moved all of these into our daughter’s room to compartmentalize the process of packing and loading of the house, and so that is where our entire family slept that night.

Days before, I had sat in the same room, already devoid of furniture, and talked to my five-year-old about the house in which we had lived for two years, the exciting new adventure to come, and what she had liked best about living there. I had always liked the way that the hallway in that house and turned unexpectedly at the end, giving the corner room (our daughter’s) a sort of quizzical geometric shape. She explained that what she like best, and what she would miss, was her pink wall (its actually purple, but she insisted).

Two years before, some friends had come to help us begin the work of getting the house back into shape. Karen had chosen wonderful colors, and we painted both our daughter’s room and the master bedroom with an accent wall. Ours were beach colors. Our daughter’s was purple (she still insists its pink). She really liked that.

There were really great things about those two years. We caught up with life a bit. Our daughter grew, and even gained a sister. There were very positive aspects to our life there…I almost exclusively worked from home, which allowed me so much more time with the family. Our daughter still talks about how much she misses the back yard, and how she could run and run there with nothing to get in the way and slow her down. She misses that.

On our final day, as we loaded a small moving truck with that last handful of things from our daughter’s room, we were all tired, hungry, and irritable. We argued a bit about the logistics of the next two days (we had to be in New England in around 72 hours, and hadn’t firmly planned a route for the drive yet). Before locking the door, I walked down the hall, enjoying its quizzical and unexpected turn one last time. I looked into all the rooms, closed and locked the door behind me, and we drove away with the For Sale sign in the front lawn, a picture from a movie, almost. I hope that the atmosphere of that house wasn’t in any way tainted by arguing in our last hour there.

We’re excited to be back in New England. There are things that will be notably absent, some seemingly big things…I don’t work from home as often, and our apartment doesn’t have a spacious back yard in which our daughter can run…but we’ll find new things from which to make memories here. I remember that house fondly…I have always been an apartment-dweller, and had never lived in a house that was mine before…and sometimes the thought of someone purchasing it makes almost sad.

Almost.

Unexpectedly good things happened during our two-year adventure there, and now we are back home.

Although the concept of “home” begins to become somewhat more relative.

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